Join Jonny Reynolds for a quick-fire recap of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, including the reaction from the winner and an intriguing driver market update.
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The Athletic Hello and welcome along to the Race F1 briefing for Sunday 7th July 2024. Brought to you by the Singapore Grand Prix, home of Formula One Night Racing. I'm Johnny Reynolds and on today's episode I'll be bringing you up to speed on an absolute humdinger of the Race at Silverstone, which left the home fans extremely happy. So let's get going with our British Grand Prix recap. Just what is it about Lewis Hamilton and Silverstone? Like Nigel Mansell before him, the British driver has always excelled on home soil and so it was that he produced another masterpiece of a drive on Sunday to capture his ninth British Grand Prix victory and his first win in two and a half years. In changeable wet dry conditions, Hamilton rolled back the years to defeat Max Verstappen and Lando Norris in a tense and thrilling finish. The race turned on two difficult pit stop phases where F1 teams and drivers were required to make a fine judgement on when to switch from slicks to intermediates and then back to slicks again and choose the right slick for the finish as the circuit dried out. McLaren appeared to have the fastest car for the worst of the conditions thanks to its choice of a higher downforce rear wing ahead of qualifying. This helped Lando Norris and Oscar Piaestri overtake the two Mercedes on track as the first round of pit stops approached. George Russell had converted pole position into the race lead ahead of teammate Hamilton but both struggled to keep their cars on track as the rain intensified. Hamilton took the lead from Russell at Stowe, visibly more confident with slightly higher downforce settings than his teammate but then both Mercedes went off at Abbey, giving the McLaren drivers the impetus to pass both of them on consecutive laps to run 1-2. Then came McLaren's first mistake, failing to double stack its drivers in the pits as the lead has stopped to switch from slicks to intermediates. Norris retained the lead from Hamilton but waiting an extra lap to stop meant Piaestri dropped from second to sixth, having caught up to Norris just before the pit stop phase. Shortly after this round of stops, pole sit a Russell retired from the race with what Mercedes called a water system issue, leaving Hamilton to find Norris and Max Verstappen's Red Bull alone. The track then began drying out again and now came the second big strategic call, when to pit for slicks and what compound to choose. Hamilton and Verstappen pulled the trigger at the end of lap 38 of 52, Hamilton fitting softs and Verstappen hards. Piaestri followed them in and took on a set of mediums. Norris then stopped on the next lap and after some heated radio chatter opted to cover Hamilton's choice of softs. This didn't work. The medium or the hard was the better choice and as Norris's front left began to wilt Verstappen closed in, eventually passing the McLaren for second around the outside at Stowe with DRS open with four laps to go. The reigning world champion then closed to within 1.4 seconds of Hamilton at the flag but ran out of laps to catch and pass the Mercedes driver who was overcome with emotion as he finally ended a long windless run. Like Hamilton Verstappen also drove superbly, his car and its new floor replaced after he had damaged the original in qualifying, coming alive as the race wore on. Norris completed the podium, disappointed at getting the key calls wrong, while Piaestri, on the better tyre, finished fourth, well ahead of Carlos Sciences Ferrari. Nico Holkenberg followed up impressive qualifying pace with an excellent sixth place in the upgraded house, beating both Aston Martin's despite dropping to ninth on the opening lap with a wide moment at turn three. Lance Stroll finished ahead of Fernando Alonso in seventh while Alex Albon's Williams and Yuki Sonoda's RB rounded out the point scorers. Rarely if ever has Lewis Hamilton looked so emotional after a grand pre-victory and he now has 104 of them. But this one was a long time coming for the 39 year old who last tasted victory at the 2021 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and who admitted on Sunday that he wasn't sure he'd ever win again. Hamilton said, "You've got to continue to dig deep even when you feel like you're at the bottom of the barrel. There's definitely been days between 2021 and here where I didn't feel like I was good enough or whether I was going to get back to where I am today. But the important thing is I had great people around me continuing to support me." Later, speaking to Skye, Hamilton admitted there had been times during his winless run that he considered stopping altogether. But as Scott Mitchell-Moum explains on the race website, "While there are days where Hamilton might be struggling, make mistakes or drop his head, when the chance is there he lights up and you can't do that if the fire and the ability isn't there anymore." Hamilton said, "It has been a really challenging few years for everyone in the team. Knowing how hard everyone has worked to fight back, I think it was a real release of emotion. I am forever grateful to everyone in this team, to Mercedes, to all our partners. To finally succeed is the greatest feeling I remember having. The challenge for Hamilton now, of course, is to ensure there isn't such a big gap between this victory and the next." So, Lewis Hamilton gave the massive Silverstone crowd the home win they wanted. But should it have been a different British driver on the top step of the podium? That was the feeling of Lando Norris, who felt he and McLaren had made some poor decisions that led him to slip from the lead to P3 at the flag. As I mentioned before, Norris lost his lead as the drivers switched back to slick tyres from intermediates in the latter stages of the race. The McLaren driver stopping a lap later than Hamilton, who undercut him and putting on soft tyres, which he'd later rude doing. After the race, Norris said, "Congrats to Lewis. That crucial decision at the end, he just did a better job on. So hats off to him and Mercedes. They deserve it." He then went on to say that he had "a few too many let downs today." Adding, "I blame myself today for not making some of the right decisions. I hate it. I hate ending in this position and having excuses for not doing a good enough job." One benefit of Norris's third position was that it strengthened his grip on P2 in the driver's championship, and the Britain was keen to look on the bright side despite his obvious frustrations. Norris said, "I think we still did so many things right, so many positives, especially here in Silverstone, the one place I would love for everything to go perfectly. It didn't today. We'll come back stronger next year and try again." We'll get back to our race recap in a moment, but first of all I wanted to give another shout out to the home of Formula One Night Racing, the Singapore Grand Prix. There's less than three months to go now until one of the real highlights of the F1 season, when the teams and drivers will do battle under the lights at Marina Bay in one of the toughest and most exciting races of the year. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, then I urge you to go back and watch the highlights of last year's race, which had fans on the edge of their seats until the very last lap. But don't just take my word for it, see it for yourself. Single day tickets start from 128 Singapore dollars, just head to SingaporeGP.sg to make your selection and book your place at one of the sporting events of the year. The Singapore Grand Prix. Nothing else comes close. Yesterday we reported on miserable qualifying sessions for both Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez, and I'm sorry to report that things didn't get much better for either driver in the race. In fact, neither figured in the battle for even minor points, both suffering horribly for switching to intermediates far too early when the track was still too dry. Leclerc could only recover to 14th on a difficult weekend for Ferrari, which has hit bouncing problems with its latest Spanish GP aero upgrade and had to revert to an older specification. Perez meanwhile finished a lowly 17th after starting from the pit lane, as pressure mounts on him to turn around a miserable runner form or risk potentially losing his Red Bull seat. Red Bull team boss Christian Horner admitted after the British GP, quote, "to win the Constructors' Championship, you need both cars scoring," adding that Perez knows it is, quote, "unsustainable to not be scoring points." And just to add to the intrigue over Perez's future, it's emerged that Red Bull's reserve driver Liam Lawson will test the 2024 Red Bull at Silverstone this week, as the team complete one of its allotted promotional runs. Horner tried to play down the significance of this outing, but it will no doubt help Red Bull evaluate Lawson's suitability for the top team. Horner, who could not disguise post-race that Perez had had a "horrible weekend," said only that Lawson's tests had been planned for a while, but he did not rule out shuffling the line-up when asked. Horner said, "Of course Checco is under pressure, that's normal in Formula One, and when you are under delivering, that pressure only mounts." Having stood in for Daniel Riccardo for five races last year and performed well, Lawson has shown himself worthy of a proper F1 chance, and Red Bull needs to decide by September whether it is putting him in one of its cars or not, otherwise he'll become a free agent. Riccardo, who has been tipped as the man to replace Perez should Red Bull pull the trigger, did himself few favours with a difficult British GP in which he finished behind RB teammate Yuki Sonoda. In terms of a Red Bull racing opening, Riccardo said the F1's becoming "more Hollywood" with the wild narratives around it in recent years, and wouldn't make any predictions about what happens in the driver market. But Riccardo did concede crazy things can happen in F1, and there's no doubt that Red Bull's hand being forced into a shock mid-year change at its top team would be one of the extraordinary twists in recent memory. Let's finish today's episode with a quick look at the standings, and in the driver's championship Max Verstappen has increased his lead to 84 points over Lando Norris. Charles Leclerc remains third with 150 points, but teammate Carlos Sainz is now just four points behind him despite missing a race this season. Further back, Lewis Hamilton is now just one point behind teammate George Russell and P8 in the standings, with the duo both closing on Sergio Perez in recent races. In the Constructors' stakes, Red Bull are 71 points clear of Ferrari, but with a nine-point swing this weekend, McLaren closed the gap and could be within touching distance soon if Perez' poor run continues. Well, that's all for today's episode, and indeed for this weekend. Whether you've been with us for all four days or just one, a big thank you for listening, and we hope you'll join us again in a couple of weeks for the Hungarian Grand Prix. Until then, I'm Johnny Reynolds, and this has been the Rice F1 briefing. Goodbye! As you've probably heard by now, we've teamed up with BedMGM this season. We'll be using BedMGM lines to make all of our picks, and we'll have special offers for our listeners each week. If you haven't signed up for BedMGM yet, use Bonus Code the Athletic, and you'll get a one-year subscription to the Athletic, plus up to a $1,500 first bet offer on your first wager with BedMGM. Here's how it works. 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